Reinhold Messner by Reinhold Messner

Author:Reinhold Messner
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781594858536
Publisher: The Mountaineers Books
Published: 2014-04-11T04:00:00+00:00

Ice walking: snow and fog in Antarctica (1989)

H: What did you mean when you said that the speed you did it in made you a little bit arrogant?

M: When you are testing the limits of what is possible, you are constantly living between setbacks and confirmation. In spite of the bad weather, we set an incredible pace, all in all. We made a diagonal crossing of Greenland in a faster time than most people had taken for the short route, even when they’d sled sailed part of it like we did. This success made us cocky. We were pretty sure we’d manage our next project, the 2000 kilometers from Siberia to Canada, without any major problems.

H: After your quick success on the trans-Greenland expedition, you were already planning your next adventure, the traverse of the North Pole?

M: Yes, in 1995 we wanted to go from Siberia over the pack ice to the North Pole and on to Canada. That’s 2000 kilometers as the crow flies. Across the worst pack ice in the world. And there’s the drift to contend with, too.

This traverse of the Arctic was one of the last great problems—a big challenge, in other words. It had never been done without air support. But that’s exactly how we wanted to do it.

H: How thick was the ice up there?

M: Two meters in the middle, but at the edges, where we set off, it wasn’t even 20 centimeters thick. It could only take the weight of one of us at a time. It wobbled when you walked on it, and we could hear the water underneath. The ice skin rose and fell; it was like a blanket made of ice. It’s a strange feeling at first, walking on ice that thin, but you get used to it. You get the feeling the ice is alive.

H: How can ice that is 20 centimeters thick wobble?

M: It’s not like the kind of ice we get. It’s not freshwater ice; it’s saltwater ice—compressed and soft, like a firm mass, made up of little pieces. It’s not like the frozen surface you get on our ponds in winter.

There are pieces as big as a soccer pitch and pretty stable. Other parts are grey, new ice, only about 5 centimeters thick—big strips as wide as a road. In between are channels, wide cracks in the ice that you have to try to get across. Taking to the water is not really an option.

Our main problem was the ice compression, the pressure ridges. There was a constant north wind that made the ice, and the water under it, unsettled. That north wind slowly increased to storm force, and we were stupid enough to keep going in spite of this. Instead of going back and waiting for things to calm down, we just kept walking north, into the storm.

It was fifty degrees below zero and Arctic night. We were walking to our doom, quite simply. During the second night, the ice around us compressed like an accordion.

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